Sam Lutzker

Sam Lutzker is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His dissertation, “Vehicle Living in Los Angeles : An Ethnography of Homelessness, Home, and the Local Politics of Criminalization and Care,” follows a diverse range of vehicle residents as they navigate shelter and housing, policing and social services, and shifting neighborhoods where their presence is both demonized and tolerated. As a community-engaged researcher, Sam was part of the After Echo Park Lake Research Collective, co‑authoring a widely cited policy report on the mass displacement of unhoused people from Echo Park Lake, as well as an article in Radical Housing Journal and an op‑ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. He has also written about state- and city-level homeless policies in the Los Angeles Times and Knock LA. When not doing research or teaching, Sam loves riding his bike and eating his way through LA with friends.